Protesters dodged rubber bullets and tear gas fired by the police on the Champs-Elysees in Paris on Saturday. Photo: Rafael Yaghobzadeh/APProtesters dodged rubber bullets and tear gas fired by the police on the Champs-Elysees in Paris on Saturday. Photo: Rafael Yaghobzadeh/AP

Falling for “Les Fake News,” Trump Spreads Lie That French Protesters Chanted His Name

Protesters dodged rubber bullets and tear gas fired by the police on the Champs-Elysees in Paris on Saturday. Photo: Rafael Yaghobzadeh/APProtesters dodged rubber bullets and tear gas fired by the police on the Champs-Elysees in Paris on Saturday. Photo: Rafael Yaghobzadeh/AP

Donald Trump is so vain that he really thinks the protests in Paris are about him. As about 8,000 anti-government protesters wearing yellow safety vests dodged tear gas in the French capital on Saturday, the president of the United States fell for a social media hoax, claiming that the demonstrators were chanting his name.

As reporters like Samuel Laurent of Le Monde and Ryan Broderick of Buzzfeed News have explained, there is a Trumpian aspect to the unrest in France though, since “les fake news” has helped fuel the wave of protests over the past month. That’s because the yellow-vest movement has galvanized support for protests via social networks, particularly Facebook, with a potent mix of genuine stories of suffering caused by real failings of the French government and a raft of conspiracy theories and hoaxes — including the viral rumor that a non-binding United Nations pact on migration would soon put France under UN administration, so that millions of migrants could be resettled to replace the native-born population.

Today is the first time Patricia, 23 and her sister Laurence, 33 from the Paris suburbs have demonstrated. They talk about similar themes: Rich getting richer, the need for a president who understands the country, and want a change to help lower middle classes. pic.twitter.com/JD3Se6V0La

Laeticia, 32, a supermarket cashier from Picardie, said: "I've got 3 children & I can't see a future for them. We live in misery, with low salaries, constantly overdrawn at the bank. We can't back down now. There has to be a better way to run this country." pic.twitter.com/8ttx9NI1Vc

Some protesters in Paris on Saturday demanded a French exit from the European Union.

Photo: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Amid skirmishes between the riot police and violent protesters known as “casseurs,” or “breakers,” which led to more than 700 arrests, there were also calls for non-violence, demands for taxes to be halved and social spending to be doubled, anti-vaccine activists, snatched selfies and eloquently simple slogans scrawled on vests, like one woman who just wrote, “I’m under pressure.”

There were also widespread displays of solidarity from protesters with a group of high-school students who were arrested this week in Mantes-la-Jolie, west of Paris, and forced by the police to kneel in the mud with their hands on their heads.

Trump’s false claim that the protesters were inspired by his hatred of the Paris climate agreement was also undermined by the presence of many yellow vests at a climate march in another part of the French capital, where more than 20,000 people demanded action.

At the climate march, Stéphane Mandard of Le Monde noted that one of the yellow vests was emblazoned with a slogan that seemed to offer one answer to the two struggles: “Make the rich pay for the environmental transition.”